Mission & Justice

24/6/08

About 3,000 ethnic Hmong refugees people are refusing pressure from the Thai government to return home to Laos after a mass breakout last weekend from a detention centre in northern Thailand. On Friday some 5,000 refugees marched out of the Huey Nam Khao camp in Thailand’s Petchabun province, in an effort to bring attention to their claims for asylum. About 2,000 of the refugees have now reportedly agreed to return to Laos, some of them saying they had been offered $500 per family from the Laos government - the equivalent of half a years’ wage. But the remaining 3,000 have refused to move, and are demanding urgent help from the United Nations’ refugee agency.

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Joanna Maxwell; 20/6/08

Chief Yong Tong Veng, head of the Hmong people at Petchabun camp, is desperate. ‘We are hiding in this camp and no-one has come to help, the food is not enough. Do not send us back to Laos. Do not send us back to Laos. Please ask UNHCR [the United Nations Refugee agency] to help us. The Lao government shoot with big bullets in the jungle and children die. Do not send us back to Laos …’ Some 8000 Hmong people live in this camp, 350 kilometres north of Bangkok, towards the Lao border. They are surrounded by barbed wire and under military guard. They have insufficient food, no schooling and limited ability to access Thai hospitals. Epidemics are a constant threat. They must wear identity cards marked ‘in Thailand illegally’. They could be pitched back into Laos and the terrors it holds for them at any time.

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